corpse candle |
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GNU Webster's 1913 (1 definition)
- A thick candle formerly used at a lich wake, or the customary watching with a corpse on the night before its interment. (b) A luminous appearance, resembling the flame of a candle, sometimes seen in churchyards and other damp places, superstitiously regarded as portending death.
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Hirnant, told me that a drunken sailor at Borth said he went up to a corpse candle and attempted to light his pipe at it, but he was whisked away, and when he came to himself he discovered that he was far off the road in the bog.
There is a tradition that St. David, by prayer, obtained the corpse candle as a sign to the living of the reality of another world, and that originally it was confined to his diocese.
Aben looked at the window and he beheld a corpse candle moving outward through the way of the gate.
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